Dinnertime at the Midnight Mission starts at 4:30.
By then, on a sweltering summer afternoon, the line for food at the Skid Row homeless center stretches for nearly an entire block. These days, demand is high at the Midnight Mission, which serves about 3,000 meals a day. By comparison, a typical large, busy L.A. restaurant might serve 1,000. That’s more meals than at any other time …

It’s a Saturday morning at the Long Beach Convention Center, and the mood inside a second-floor ballroom is gleefully anticipatory. Nearly 1,000 people mill around, chattering and dancing to blaring pop music. It feels like we’re waiting for a concert to start, except that it’s not even 10 a.m.
Eventually, a blonde woman and a thin young man walk onto the stage at the front …

If you’ve set foot inside a mall, shopped online, bought a Christmas tree or otherwise flexed your purchasing power this holiday season, chances are good that you’ve been helped in some way by a seasonal worker.
All sorts of businesses, from big box stores to online retailers to mom-and-pop boutiques, beef up their workforces at the end of the year to meet the holiday rush …

For decades, local leaders have dreamed of transforming downtown L.A.’s Grand Avenue into a cultural mecca. Plans for the street have included a park, fancy condos, hotels and a shopping district. While some of it has come to fruition like the Civic Park between the Music Center and City Hall, most remains unrealized. Why?
On October 2nd, KCRW’s Warren Olney and Frances Anderton will host …

State Senator Anthony Cannella represents a swath of the Central Valley that’s 64 percent Latino. That includes nearly half his district’s registered voters. So it’s not too surprising that Cannella, along with more than a dozen other California Republicans, are pushing back against their party’s national leaders on immigration reform and calling for a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in …

I dream of flying by private jet every time I lug suitcases into LAX. But it’s a fantasy I’ve always considered way out of reach, a luxury reserved for the richest one percent. Or is it?
The aviation company BlackJet, which recently added L.A. to its list of cities and is backed by Hollywood players like Ashton Kutcher and Will Smith, aims to make private …

If you combined the avant-garde choreography of Merce Cunningham with the wardrobe from the 1986 Sean Connery movie “The Name of the Rose,” you might end up with something resembling the trailer for “AXIOM,” a new dance show opening Thursday at Cafe Club Fais Do-Do in Mid City. (Embedded below.)
“It’s a dance performance, but it’s theatrical,” said producer Kristin Campbell-Taylor. “You’re immersed in a …

A liquor store parking lot in South LA isn’t a typical setting for a farmer’s market in this city. But that’s where a new Friday afternoon produce stand set up shop last week. The mini-market, spearheaded by the nonprofit groups Community Coalition and Community Unlimited, will be open Fridays from 3 until 6 p.m. at Century Market, on the corner of Western Avenue and …

The Los Angeles Times this afternoon posted a profile of Margarita Gomez, one of the five victims of Friday’s shooting at Santa Monica College. Gomez, 68, was a familiar face here on campus. She lived across the street and usually visited twice a day to collect recyclables. The Times spoke to Gomez’s son, Rafael Torres:

While our focus in covering last week’s shooting has been on keeping up with the news, KCRW also happens to be located on Santa Monica College campus, where the rampage ended. This is an account of what happened behind the scenes at the station and how it stayed on-air after being evacuated.
KCRW General Manager Jennifer Ferro was leading a small station tour when a …

Has your mailbox been overflowing in recent weeks with political mailers touting candidates for tomorrow’s election? Mine has. At some point, I started to wonder: Who makes these things? How does the business work? And what do they really do? I recently spoke to two slate mail producers — one Democrat, one Republican — to get some answers.
The mailers I examined are simple advertising …

The average Angeleno wastes 60 hours stuck in traffic every year.
That depressing statistic comes from latest annual report by INRIX, a Washington-based traffic research company. INRIX not only ranks the country’s worst traffic cities each year, but also lists the worst times to drive in those cities. So what’s the worst hour of the week on LA’s traffic-choked streets and freeways?
The most congested hour …

Downtown LA’s population has more than quadrupled in the past decade. Many of the new arrivals are families with young children, and they say there aren’t enough good public schools in the area.
Last year, a group of downtown parents decided to start their own elementary school. Metro Charter was approved by the LA school board this month and is scheduled to open in the …

Al Walser is a DJ who lives in Encino and may or may not be an heir to the Rothschild banking dynasty and the grandson of Congolese music superstar Franco Luambo. He’s also up for the best dance recording Grammy at this Sunday’s awards. Before the nomination, nobody in the electronic dance music world had heard of Walser. So how did this previously unknown, …

The Texas-based Boy Scouts of America will vote next week on whether to remove the nationwide ban on gay members and scout leaders. However, it would still be up to local units to decide whether to allow gay scouts and leaders.
“The Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents,” said a spokesman for the Boy Scouts of …

The five top contenders to succeed Antonio Villaraigosa as LA’s next mayor will face off in a live televised debate at UCLA’s Royce Hall tonight at 7 p.m. The forum will feature LA City Council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry, City Controller Wendy Greuel, entertainment lawyer Kevin James (the lone Republican in the pack) and former technology executive Emanuel Pleitez.
The debate will be …

Southern California’s first gun show since the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last month drew a huge crowd to the Ontario Convention Center over the weekend. On Saturday alone, about 6,000 people attended the Crossroads of the West show. Typically, the event attracts about that many in an entire weekend. I was there Saturday, and many of the attendees I spoke to said they …

USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance will train aspiring dancers and choreographers, and is being funded by LA philanthropist Glorya Kaufman. But ballerinas don’t usually go to college. While most young adults spend their college years switching majors, drinking beer and generally figuring out what to do with their lives, this is a prime professional time for dancers. So why is USC spending millions of dollars …

Do you think “The Nutcracker” ballet is a time-honored holiday tradition, or an overdone relic?
Either way, you’ve probably never seen a production of it quite like the one the LA Contemporary Dance Company is debuting this weekend at the Brewery Art Complex east of downtown.
I spoke this week with LACDC Artistic Director Kate Hutter and a few of her dancers about their very un-traditional …

When I finally reached the front of the line at my polling place this morning, the woman behind the table looked up at me and frowned. “It looks like you already voted,” she said. “By Mail. I can’t let you vote twice.”
The problem: I didn’t.
“Well,” the woman said when I told her, “I don’t know what to do. It says here that we received …